Posts Tagged ‘gluten free’

I was really excited to discover this product and wanted to share it with you. I love finding new cake decorating techniques that are available for allergen free cakes too.

Vintage lace has been very popular on wedding cakes this year. Such delicate decoration at one time would have needed a great deal of skill to achieve. This is really easy to use and looks very professional.

Squires Kitchen Flexi-Ice does not contain any allergens in the ingredients list. The allergy advice does state ‘May contain nuts’. Please be aware that other brands do contain wheat flour. Always check the label but I know you do!

You can pipe with this icing but it does take a bit of practise for finer work.

I have taken the following text from the product description which explains how to use it.

Flexi-Ice is a flexible, multi-purpose icing with a delicate natural vanilla flavour. Ideal for creating fine, edible lace in sugar, this versatile mix can also be piped, stencilled, coloured and used to make edible confetti.
Developed by the experts at Squires Kitchen and thoroughly tested by professional cake makers, Flexi-Ice is easy to both make and apply. Simply add 150ml of cooled, boiled water for every 100g of the mix and beat until smooth – you can leave the icing white or colour it any shade with Squires Kitchen’s wide range of liquid, paste and dust food colours.

Once mixed, Flexi-Ice is perfect for piping and stencilling on cakes, cupcakes and cookies. For a lace effect, spread the paste over a lace mould with a smoother or scraper.

Either leave to air-dry or place in a cool oven or dehumidifier for just 20–30 minutes and the paste should easily peel away from the mat. Flexi-Ice remains pliable for at least a day and, if it starts to firm up, just pass the icing through the steam of a kettle to restore its flexibility.

Once made, the unique texture of Flexi-Ice makes it so easy to decorate with – simply cut the paste with scissors or a pizza wheel and fold it into shape. Create on-trend lace decorations, such as sumptuous frills, beautiful bows and delicate flowers for celebration cakes, favours, desserts and more.

New Squires Kitchen Instant Mix Flexi-Ice is available from www.squires-shop.com and from good cake decorating suppliers nationwide. RRP £8.99 for 500g.

A little while ago now a very popular brand of gluten free products in the US – Udi’s Gluten Free, launched their gluten free products in the UK.

Udi’s very kindly sent me a big box of goodies to review.

I was very impressed with all the products they sent to me. I was very excited to try the bagels and they didn’t disappoint.

I tried the Cinnamon and Raisin bagels toasted with butter. They toasted well and tasted lovely and moist. The plain bagels were great toasted and filled for lunch. I couldn’t taste any difference from a usual bagel. Udi’s bagels contain egg. Their list of ingredients can be found here.

I had seen Nakd bars in the shops but hadn’t tried them yet as it isn’t the sort of thing I would usually buy so when I was asked if I would like to try Nakd products I suddenly thought – yes actually I think I would! I felt very spoiled when this was delivered!

Fruit tea, a china cup, a tube of gorgeous lavender hand cream and a packet of Nakd Cocoa Delight.

If your choice of snack is sugary sweet then this may not be for you. I like dried fruit but prefer them in foods rather than on their own so these bites were ideal.

Made from dates, cashew nuts, raisins, cocoa powder and rice flour. I honestly think these are the perfect guilt free in between meals snack and I will be trying their other flavours.

Method
Preheat oven to 180°c / 350°f / gas mark 4.
Grease and line an 8inch round cake tin with greaseproof paper.
Combine the flour, maize flour, ground almonds, baking powder, mixed spice and salt in a bowl.
Sieve together four times to make sure the baking powder is evenly distributed.
Measure the sunflower oil, eggs, brown sugar and vanilla into a large mixing bowl. Whisk together until paler in colour then stir in the flour mixture. Stir in the parsnip and chopped apple.
Pour into the prepared cake tin and bake for 50 minutes to 1 hour until a knife inserted comes out clean.
Leave to cool in the tin for 15 minutes before turning out onto a plate. Now turn this onto the cooling wire so the cake cools the right way up or it could break in half.

For the topping

soften the butter for 10 seconds in a microwave or leave at room temperature before beating together with the icing sugar. This is easier if you use a food mixer with a beater attachment or use a hand held mixer. Add the cream cheese and beat until smooth. Mix in the vanilla extract and mixed spice or cinnamon to taste.
Spread onto the top and sides of the cake with a pallet knife.

Dairy free topping

Mix the icing sugar into the dairy free margarine. Do not overbeat the mixture as it will split. Stir in a few drops of water until it reaches the required consistency. Stir in vanilla extract and mixed spice or cinnamon to taste.
You may think this is a lot of icing sugar. If you use less icing sugar to margarine, the mixture will split. Add a little extra flavouring to this buttercream.
Spread onto the top and sides of the cake with a pallet knife.

I was given a lovely big box of goodies from www.sukrin.com/en/ to try. It contained granulated, brown and icing sugar alternative. Sesame flour, almond flour, Fibrefine which is a high fibre corn flour. A bread mix and cake mix!

Where do I start?

I thought I’d start with the easy option – the bread and cake mix.

This is a low carbohydrate bread mix is wheat, milk, yeast, soy and sugar free. It does contain egg. Apparently it is very popular amoung sports people and I can see why.

The mix comes with it’s own baking tin. All you need to do is stir in the water and any extra flavourings you like. Spoon into the tin, level the top and bake.

I kept my bread plain so I could taste it as it was. It had a lovely flavour and was full of seeds. It was quite moist but soft. The pack says to store in the fridge. It still tasted good 4 days later.

The cake mix makes an 8 inch cake and is gluten and sugar free. Again I kept it quite plain so I could taste the flavour as it was.

This cake mix is mixed together with 3 eggs, 75ml vegetable oil and 150ml water and any flavourings you like. The company have produced a booklet of recipes which can be made with the cake mix.

The mix I used has sesame flour as the first ingredient. I don’t know if the recipe has changed as the ingredient list on the website lists almond flour as the first ingredient. I mention this as I did find the cake had a strong flavour which I didn’t really like.

It had a great texture and lasted a few days. I think this cake mix might suit strong flavours being added to it.

To make the raspberry mousse
Blitz the raspberries in a food processor and sieve the puree into a bowl.
Blend the cornflour with a little cold water.
Place the caster sugar and 125ml water into a saucepan. Bring to the boil and add the raspberry puree. Bring back to the boil and thicken with the cornflour. Leave to cool.

For the swiss roll.
Line a 12 x 8 inch swiss roll tin with baking parchment. Place another piece of parchment the same size on a worktop and sprinkle with caster sugar.

Place the gluten free flour, baking powder, salt and caster sugar into a large mixing bowl.
Measure the sunflower oil, vinegar, vanilla and water into a jug and mix into the dry ingredients to make a smooth thick batter.
Pour into the tin and bake for 20 minutes.
Turn the sponge out on top of the prepared baking parchment, move the sponge around so it doesn’t stick to the paper. Leave for 5 minutes with the baking parchment on top.

While the sponge is still quite hot, spread on the strawberry jam and roll up the sponge using the baking parchment to keep the sponge together. Keep the baking parchment around the sponge until cold.

Line a 2 pint bowl with cling film. Cut the swiss roll into slices 1cm thick. Line the bowl with the sponges packing tightly together.
Whip the coconut cream until thick, fold into the raspberry mixture and pour on top of the sponges.
Leave to set before turning out onto a serving plate.
You can boil a spoonful of apricot jam with a spoonful of water and brush this over the sponge if you don’t fancy coating the sponge in arrowroot.
Decorate with the whipped coconut cream and raspberries.

I’m going to work on this swiss roll recipe. It tasted fine on the first day but wasn’t very nice the next day. The mousse though tastes yummy!

The quarter final of ‘Bake off’ gave us some much anticipated ‘Free from’ dishes. We had a gluten free bread in the Signature Bake, dairy free cake for the show stopper and a gluten free technical challenge.

So can this recipe be made without dairy, soya and egg too? Yes and honestly tastes just the same as with these ingredients.

I thought the meringue would fall apart quite quickly but it was still intact the next day – probably too soft to serve. I was a bit worried about coating the sides of the meringue with the custard but now I think it would hold.

Preheat the oven to 180°c (160°c fan oven)
Blitz the hazelnuts in a food processor until coarsely ground. Spread onto a baking tray and bake for 10 minutes. Leave to cool.
Turn the oven down to 130°c (110°c fan oven).
Mix the no egg together with the pectin and 85ml cold water in a large mixing bowl. Mix on a high speed for 5 minutes.
Add the icing sugar and brown sugar 1 tablespoon at a time. Continue whisking for 5 minutes until thick and it stands in peaks.
Draw 3 x 6 inch circles on baking parchment, turn over onto two baking trays.
Fold the hazelnuts into the meringue.
Fit a piping bag with a large plain nozzle. Fill with the meringue.
Pipe the meringue into the three circles. Bake in the oven for 2 hours. Turn the oven off and leave in the oven until cool.

For the custard – heat the almond milk in a saucepan. Dissolve the coffee with a little boiling water.
Blend the cornflour with a drop of cold water. When the almond milk comes to the boil, whisk in the cornflour to thicken.
Stir in the dissolved coffee and sugar. Pour into a bowl and leave to cool. Place in the fridge until needed.

For the ganache – bring the almond milk to the boil and stir in the chocolate to melt.

Place the white sugar into a small saucepan with a drop of water. Boil to a caramel. Throw in the hazelnuts to coat. Take out the hazelnuts with two forks and place onto baking parchment to set.

When ready to assemble

Place the coconut cream into a large mixing bowl. Whisk until thick. Fold into the cold coffee custard.
Place one meringue onto your serving plate. Spoon half the custard onto the meringue. Place another meringue on top. Spoon the remaining custard on top. Top with the final meringue. Decorate with the ganache and hazelnuts.

I have wanted to experiment with egg free choux pastry for a while. This weeks challenge has given me the chance to try gluten, dairy and egg free.

The egg replacement has impressed me again!

For my first attempt I used gluten free flour. They turned out like this.

They puffed up but tasted a bit like a prawn cracker.

I thought I needed a different flour so I tried gram flour (chickpea) and it worked!

I found this recipe worked best for small profiterole sized choux buns. My larger buns had a bit of a soggy bottom! But after 30 minutes I opened them up and scraped out some of the mixture and popped them back into the oven for 5 minutes and they tasted fine.

And here is my recipe for chocolate ganache and dairy free chocolate ganache.

The recipe – Gluten, dairy, soya and egg free Religieuse – makes 4

For the choux pastry
50 grams Vitalite margarine – other dairy free margarines will work but I find they don’t puff up as much.
65 grams gram flour (chickpea flour)
4 teasoons Orgran No Egg whisked together with 8 tablespoons cold water

Chill your dairy free whipping cream.
For the choux pastry – Preheat the oven to 220°c/200°c fan oven/ gas mark 7.
Place the margarine into a saucepan with 125ml cold water, place on the heat.

The margarine should have melted by the time the water comes to the boil.
Stir in the gram flour. Stir over the heat for a minute until the mixture comes together and looks like a dough. It will have some lumps of gram flour.

Leave for a minute while you place a piece of baking parchment onto 2 oven trays and prepare a piping bag with a large plain nozzle.
Stir in the egg replacement and water a little at a time.
Fill your piping bag with the mixture and pipe 4 bulbs onto one baking tray and 4 bigger bulbs onto the other tray. The buns will stay a similar size as piped.

Bake in the oven for about 35 minutes depending on their size. Small profiteroles took 25 minutes. Make a small hole near the base of each bun after 25 minutes (20 minutes for smaller buns) to help dry out and continue baking. For larger buns, once the outside is cooked you may want to open up the bun and scrape out a little of the mixture from inside the base and put back into the oven for 5 more minutes.

For the custard – bring the almond milk to the boil.
Blend the custard powder with a little water and whisk into the milk. Stir in the caster sugar. Leave to cool then store in the fridge until needed.
For the ganache – bring the almond milk to the boil, stir in the plain chocolate until melted. Leave until coating consistency then dip in each bun and leave to set.
Just before serving place the custard into a piping bag fitted with a small plain nozzle. Fill each bun with the custard.
Stick a smaller bun on top of a larger bun. Decorate the join with the whipped dairy free cream.

Gluten free and dairy free advice and information - The special diet blog

My name is Gemma Mcfarlane. I have been cooking meals for people with special diets since leaving catering college. I became determined to offer the same choices to everyone so began researching and experimenting with different ingredients.

Many people think they have to give up their favourite foods when they discover they have a food intolerance or allergy. They are put off by bland, processed special diet cakes in supermarkets and long for good, homemade food but don't realise they can make anything better themselves.

By putting my recipes online I hope to introduce you to the joys of gluten and dairy free baking.